Button Poll #2: Only those with normal cognitive capacity are given buttons.

[Emily's Cat]

"let's give only those people who think like me the choice".
EC, by now, at the very least, you have to realize that lot's of, if not most people, see the problem different than you do, and that should make you rethink instead of doubling down.

How on earth do you imagine that cognitively capable implies like-minded?

Perhaps you're not as cognitively capable as I assumed.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Good point. It is of course magic and entirely theoretical, but even in a magical scenario, I think there would need to be some way of determining who is theoretically capable of the choice, and a default result for refusal to choose at all or to push both buttons at once. Any attempt to figure out the default would require a calculation of how many people would decline the challenge, since if enough people can be expected to do so, the default will occur automatically.

I can't think of a fair way this could be done in an actual real world.

While we're at it, thinking about this also brings about an interesting complication I don't think has been covered much here. If the vote and result exclude both children and the incompetent, any outcome that has red prevailing will leave the remaining population disproportionately responsible not only for an indeterminately large number of newly orphaned children, right down to nursing newborns whose parents suddenly vanish before their eyes, but all those who are mentally handicapped or insane. I would expect the prospect of this might also influence the choice. If there is a post-red apocalypse the survivors will pay a high price, and the ethical choice that led them there will be only the first of more to come.

A whole bunch of you would seemingly spend hours and hours nitpicking the trolley problem to death and never come up with an actual answer, leaving your psych evaluator perplexed as to whether you even understood the point of the question in the first place.

 

[erwinl]

A whole bunch of you would seemingly spend hours and hours nitpicking the trolley problem to death and never come up with an actual answer, leaving your psych evaluator perplexed as to whether you even understood the point of the question in the first place.

As the trolly problem is the ultimate ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ question, designed only to start an agressive argument with the person asked to answer said question, I fail to see your problem.

 

[bruto]

A whole bunch of you would seemingly spend hours and hours nitpicking the trolley problem to death and never come up with an actual answer, leaving your psych evaluator perplexed as to whether you even understood the point of the question in the first place.

Well, fortunately I don't have a psych evaluator so do not have to tell them that the point of the question is debatable because under any kind of scrutiny it's obvious that it can be argued and answered either way, and with a little of the usual "but what if..." added, any answer can be made wrong; and that whatever they might claim the point of the question is, its meta-point, whether intentional or not, is to show how malleable principles and doctrines can be when they collide with reality, how poorly any absolutes fit into the complexity and chaos of the real world, and how easy it is to yell "gotcha" when you want to score points in an argument.

Like the trolley problem, the button problem is entirely abstract, which is not to say it's entirely useless, but at that abstract level, its answer depends on numerous abstract ideas, not all of which are compatible. But it's not an actual practical guideline for behavior in the real world, or in the imagined future, because it is founded on a number of practical absurdities, and anyone who considers problems of this sort to have any value beyond that of examining and evaluating one's general principles at the conditional and abstract level should be reminded of that.

You may see, for example, the issue of post-button care for the incompetent as nitpicking, but others might well consider it part and parcel of the ethical issue that pervades the whole problem. One person might see it all as a problem about individual survival and what might be considered rational choice, while another might see it as a problem about what you want the world itself to be. Each of those parties can declare the other not to understand the point of the question.